


Beloved of Death

by rightsidethru



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Norse Religion & Lore, BAMF Tony Stark, Dark Tony Stark, M/M, Tony is Hel's favorite, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, wherein the Merchant of Death nickname is actually literal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 20:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11722176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightsidethru/pseuds/rightsidethru
Summary: There are those who are born that are beloved of Death.





	Beloved of Death

**Author's Note:**

> So this story came about from a couple of different sources. I'm putting the first portion of the blame on STARSdidathing's [The Merchant of Death](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11717628/chapters/26392689) if only because it sparked an idea for this oneshot, which then also drew elements from two of my own stories: [What Big Teeth You Have](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11676858) and [In Shadow and Starlight](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11584302).
> 
> While I love Tony and his tragic earnestness and trying to do _right_... it's definitely a lot of fun bringing out the darker aspects of his character. XD; This story is most definitely in that category, and I very much enjoyed writing it.  >D
> 
> The song quoted in the body of the fic can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6l5ezErGuw).
> 
> Not beta read since I don't have one, but I tried to keep any errors to a minimum. 
> 
> Enjoy! ;)

**Beloved of Death**

***

 _When I come to town for the last time_  
_Pull up in a fast car for the first time_  
_I'm gonna say goodbye_  
_You didn't see me cry_  
_I got a million on my soul_  
_I go build an army on my own_  
_They put a bounty in my soul_  
_I got a million on my soul_  
“A Million on My Soul” – Alexianne 

**

Hel watched the scrying pool with an absent gaze, dark cheek propped up by an equally dark hand. The bone-white skin of her other hand lightly trailed over the pool’s surface, creating ripples that grew larger and larger as they moved away from her barely-there touch, engorged past capacity before breathing their last as they surged up to the water’s edge.

“Here again at Mímisbrunnr, Daughter?” a voice suddenly spoke from just over the queen’s shoulder even as a muted flare of magic—laced with the heat of a flame and the chill of death both—flickered to existence. Helheim’s ruler smiled, the curve of her lips as sharp as her father’s favorite blade, and Hel eventually lifted her dual-colored gaze to meet the dark jade of Loki’s. 

The trickster god quirked a dark brow at his progeny’s otherwise impassive expression, answering smile as sharp as his daughter’s. “Odin won’t appreciate you using your position as the dead’s guardian to get out of paying the Well’s toll.”

The Queen of Helheim lifted a shoulder at the warning, dismissing it with a single gesture. Knowledge, wisdom, and payment all had different rules to be played by when they applied to her: the dead spoke to her, whispered to her their secrets that had been kept so well during their lifetime. The dead told tales, and Hel had always listened. Odin may rage at the fact that she would not provide payment to Mímir’s Well—as her grandfather had with one of his eyes, once upon a time ago—but the fact remained that Hel would be granted the knowledge she sought, freely and readily.

“Let him rage,” Hel eventually answered aloud, husky voice low and distracted as she returned her attention back to the pool and the images that they showed. “It’s not as if he can do anything about it, Father.”

Loki hummed quietly in agreement while stepping closer to Mímisbrunnr, looking down into the dark depths to see what had caught Hel’s attention so thoroughly. Immediately, both eyebrows climbed high upon his forehead, and he shifted just enough to direct an incredulous expression towards his only daughter. “You traveled all the way to Yggdrasil—to _Jötunheimr_ \--to watch a squalling, newborn babe? A _mortal_?”

Hel’s expression grew hungry, gaze blazing with a hunger that would put Fenrir and Jörmungandr to shame.

“And to watch how he shall make starlight tremble,” she murmured.

**

An exhausted Maria Stark carefully held her newborn baby—a little boy, her Anthony—against her breast, tiredly looking down upon her firstborn. The pregnancy and labor had both been difficult; there had been times when she had been afraid that she wouldn’t be able to carry Anthony to full term. But, always, when her hope flagged low and the fear nearly swallowed her whole, something—a miracle, the blessing of God—would occur and things… things would be better.

And now she was able to hold her baby in her arms, to let him suckle hungrily and eat his fill: now she was finally—finally!—a mother after so many years of trying to conceive with Howard.

Anthony’s future was a bright light upon her horizon, and Maria could not wait to watch and see how he would grow; she could not wait to see what type of man Anthony would one day become: an intelligent man as brilliant as his genius father, a kind man—a _great_ man.

“The world will be yours—and, oh, how you’ll captivate the people,” she whispered against the downy crown of the newborn’s head. "I can't wait to see how you'll shape the future, baby boy."

**

Tony knew that he wasn’t supposed to be downstairs in his father’s lab, especially when he was unsupervised.

But his mother was away at a charity event and his father was down in D.C., meeting with Aunt Peggy over SSR things. Jarvis and Anna were here—were always near—but Anna wanted to make a more complicated dish for dinner and had enlisted her husband to help her in the preparation. So, for the time being, Tony didn’t have a minder following after him at his heels.

And he was… _curious_.

The four year-old understood just what it was that his father did for SSR and the government in general; perhaps Howard wasn’t aware of just how _much_ his son comprehended already, but rarely did the inventor ever bother curbing his comments around his son when speaking to a potential client or colleague. So Tony knew about the weapons that Howard designed, was aware of the destruction and devastation that they had already rained down in so many instances.

There was… something _appealing_ about hearing those stories, about learning about the weapons that had caused such wide-spread damage.

So here Tony was: alone and unsupervised, carefully going through various blueprints that his father had left scattered across his workshop’s table before placing them in the exact position that they had originally rested in. Numbers and lines bled before the boy’s eyes, images flickering to life within his mind: he _saw_ , saw what each of his father’s creations had done—would do. It all played out in Tony’s imagination, fire and destruction and a type of fear that tended to linger in a people’s bones…

…and Tony knew how to make the designs _better_.

**

The first deal that Tony made as CEO of Stark Industries, he brought in two billion dollars, showcased just how far ahead in brilliance and lethality he was from his father, and gained a new nickname from the media:

_The Merchant of Death._

Tony smiled at that and told JARVIS to put it on a plaque.

**

Tony knew just how effective his weaponry was; he designed it all, after all. He knew that shrapnel had hit his chest, had burrowed its way through muscle and vein, cut through bone, and was on its way to his heart. He was a dead man walking, even if he somehow managed to _not_ bleed out. It was a petty enough hope—he would die, either way—but the dark-eyed inventor wanted to _live_ , if only for the sole reason to utterly annihilate whoever it was that had done this to him.

Revenge was an honorable motivation that most others could understand, in the end.

He gasped for breath and pressed a trembling hand to his chest in _any_ effort to staunch the bloodflow. It did little enough to help—crimson liquid still seeped through his fingers at a too-dangerous pace—but there wasn’t anything else that Tony _could_ do. Not alone, not without supplies, not without a miracle, divine intervention. He was fucked and he was going to die, no matter how hard he tried otherwise.

A shadow fell over his face, then, and the billionaire slowly opened his eyes, squinting to try and make out just who was blocking the light. The person stood in front of the sun, too-bright light washing out the details of their face and granting them a spiked halo for a crown. 

“Do you wish to live?” the person asked, voice light enough to show that it was a woman that was standing over him—accent strange, as well. Unplaceable, though Tony knew that he wasn’t quite at his best at the moment.

“Y-yeah,” the inventor husked, tasting copper on his tongue.

“What would you do if you _did_?” the woman asked, and Tony was suddenly so _angry_ : couldn’t she see that he was dying?? Asking if he wanted to live was _stupid_ because of _course_ he wanted to. And all she was doing was standing there, face in shadow, and asking him questions that should have otherwise been obvious in their answer when she could have been trying to save him, to help him, instead.

He bared his teeth at the woman, bloodstained teeth accenting a rictus grin.

“Burn it down. Salt the earth.”

The woman laughed at that, leaning down to be closer to the dying man. The light shifted just enough for Tony to caught sight of a pair of mismatched eyes—one bright green and the other the endless expanse of the Void—before cool lips pressed to his fevered forehead: a lovingly given benediction.

“Keep to your promise, beloved Merchant mine.”

**

The weight of the nuke was heavy upon his shoulders: a ton by itself, but its current speed and the fact that Tony needed to shift its trajectory _up_ meant that it weighed so much more. It was a fight for the suit to force the bomb upwards, but Tony refused to let go of it, refused to let it strike New York—his _home_ \--and rerouted any available power to his repulsors.

Eventually, the engineer was able to change the nuke’s trajectory, and he aimed it straight for the portal that opened to starlight and death right above his Tower. Up, up, _up_ Tony went, ignoring the other Avengers’ chatter in his comm unit.

The nuke aimed true and collided with the heart of the Chitauri fleet, consuming them all completely in a fireball that was as bright as a supernova’s heart.

“Your Mistress sends her greetings, Thanos,” Tony murmured as he fell back and down…

…down…

… _down_.

**

It was easy enough to disable SHIELD’s security systems, simple enough to let JARVIS infiltrate their systems in a way that no firewall could ever possibly hope to stop. For all the agency liked to claim that Tony Stark was nothing more than a consultant (Iron Man – yes; Tony Stark – not recommended), they still trusted him far more than they ever should. It was as if the agents forgot all of Tony’s history that preceded him in the face of him going toe-to-toe with enemies in several occasions—almost always enemies that he had created in some way, shape, or form (the Chitauri notwithstanding). They called him _hero_ now when Tony had been something else, something far worse, for much, much longer.

The engineer stepped into Loki’s cell, glancing around at the metal walls with a disinterested gaze before finally directing his attention towards the trickster god that had so recently caused so much destruction and death.

The Asgardian mage shifted his attention to his visitor, jade green gaze bright over the dull metal of the muzzle that covered his lower face and stilled his tongue.

At the sight of springtime green—not glacier _blue_ —Tony’s mouth curled in a bladed smile even as he shifted back to lean a shoulder absently against the cell’s wall. “Awesome; you’re in your right mind again,” the engineer commented and ignored how Loki’s eyes widened briefly before narrowing, suddenly going calculating and hungry in intrigued curiosity. “I’m here because I thought that you might be interested in making a deal.”

Loki’s gaze went hooded even as he quirked an eyebrow, looking the Midgardian over; despite the fact that his voice was silenced, his expression spoke loudly for him in its stead: _And what could **you** , a mortal, possibly do to help **me**?_

Tony’s smile went that much sharper, openly predatory and amused at the easy dismissal aimed his way, and he replied: “Where are my manners? You already know _who_ I am—but you’re still not quite aware of _what_ I am. Tony Stark, Merchant of Death: at your service.”

The mage’s eyes went wide with shock.

**

Ultron stumbled its way into the woods, broken and in desperate need of repair; its plans were ruined, its army destroyed—and it had barely managed to escape the battle. The AI’s robotic body was in tatters and barely functional: but at least it still lived. In the end, that was all that mattered because, while awareness still threaded through the metal coils that let it connect to the outside world, it still had the one-day opportunity to come back and finish what it started. 

The Earth was filled with vermin and it was time to eradicate them all.

The robotic shell tottered into a clearing, though it only managed one step into it before a repulsor suddenly whined to life and blew off the AI’s right arm. Ultron snarled in anger and fear, glancing up to meet Tony Stark’s dark, fathomless gaze. The Iron Man faceplate was lifted, and Ultron could _see_ how his ‘father’’s mouth curled upwards in a cruel smirk.

“You know, there’s been something that I always wondered,” the inventor began as the servos in the armor quietly _whirred_ , and Tony stepped closer to Ultron. “Never really wanted to explore it to its full conclusion ‘cause, hey, my AIs are like my kids. And I can joke with DUM-E about tossing him to the scrap heap, but I’d never do it.”

“Why are you here, Stark—alone and without the other Avengers?” Ultron snapped, taking a cautious step backwards while Tony continued to move closer and closer in his crimson-and-gold armor, metal gleaming in shades of blood beneath the afternoon sky.

Not bothering to address the question, Tony continued to resume the topic that he had initially brought up: “But then you went after JARVIS and, well, that really fucking pissed me off. So I guess, with you, Ultron, I’ll finally be able to get my question answered: Can you truly kill an AI?”

Tony’s repulsor once more began to whine, the sound somehow so much threatening than before, and Ultron’s eyes flared bright red in sudden panic; it tried to backpedal away from the still-smiling inventor, voice frantic with fear as it spoke, “Wait—Stark, you know you don’t want to do it—dear old dad—you _made me_ —“

The repulsor fired.

**

Tony watched the Bunsen burner slowly consume the letter that Steve Rogers had sent. The phone that had accompanied it had already been torn down to its most basic components—the shield, too, had been melted down. The engineer didn’t know what he would do with the unexpected Vibranium, but Tony figured that a project or two would eventually come to him. He had the time, now.

The air shifted behind him, displaced by the sudden appearance of an unexpected body—one that hadn’t been there moments before—and a sharp chin hooked over the meat of the inventor’s shoulder so that Loki could watch Tony burn his bridges.

“I wonder,” the god began, tone musing. “What will happen when they realize just _what_ they have done?”

Tony snorted at that, finally letting go of the letter to let ash and soot fall to his workshop’s drafting table. “Don’t know—and don’t really care. Hindsight’s 20/20, and they’ll eventually learn.”

Loki laughed, low and malicious: understanding in a way that none of the Avengers ever could. They were creatures of Death, beloved of her—and knew, too, full well that _everyone_ eventually must come to her to pay their dues. There was no bargaining with Death and, depending on her mood, she could be cruel.

In this particular matter, Death was so very angry on her favorite’s behalf.

“Come to bed,” Loki eventually ordered when the laughter trickled out, leaving the men wrapped in silence and darkness. He grinned against the column of Tony’s throat, slipping his hands beneath the band shirt to rake his nails possessively over the muscled planes of the engineer’s belly and chest.

Tony inhaled sharply and reached back to grab a fistful of Loki’s inky-dark hair. “Fuck, _yes_.”

The trickster chuckled once more and whisked them both away, leaving only a small pile of ash behind.

**

When Thanos finally struck the Earth, the attack a long time in coming, the Avengers were disappointed—and vindicated—at the fact that Iron Man was nowhere to be seen on the battlefield.

They all fought and fought hard, giving the battle everything that they had—everything that they were. But it was obvious from the beginning that everything that they had _wasn’t_ enough: they were all losing, falling one by one, slower in getting up after each and every fall. The end stared them all in the face, no matter how desperately they tried to deny it.

They would fail.  
They would fall.

“You get hurt, hurt them back. You get killed… walk it off,” Steve ordered into the comms, throwing back to the very same orders he had given the last time that the Avengers had Assembled as a team in Sokovia.

It still wasn’t enough, though.

*

The Avengers had fallen.  
Thanos had won.

It was then that Tony finally made his appearance on the field: the Iron Man armor had been left behind, unneeded and unnecessary. Instead, the engineer was wearing a pair of sunglasses with crimson lenses, black-on-black tailored suit fitted to neat perfection; the only color accent that he wore, besides the sunglasses, was a bright red silk tie pinned into place with a miniature arc reactor.

Tony stepped around the body of his old teammates; they were, surprisingly enough, still breathing—but whether they would remain so for very long was yet to be determined: it was solely up to the Norns and Hel by this time. Either way, it wasn’t Tony’s responsibility—either by necessity or by fate.

Instead, he sauntered casually up to the Mad Titan, hands tucked into the pockets of his slacks. Finally standing before the other being, Tony tilted his head back— _back, back_ —to meet Thanos’ cruel but intelligent gaze, and then he smirked.

“Your Mistress sends her greetings—and her displeasure, Thanos,” Tony commented lightly enough, though his dark eyes were bright in malicious glee. Thanos’ upper lip curled in distaste at the inventor’s presence and words both, though the Titan didn’t yet bother to strike him down with the Gauntlet. Taking the silence as a sign to continue, Tony said: “I mean, I have no idea why she would be. It’s not like you tortured her father and forced him to do your bidding—oh, wait—and it’s not like you attacked a crucial keystone on Yggdrasil—wait a minute—and it’s totally not like your desperate bid to eradicate all life in the universe will mean that you’ll destroy _her_ because, hey, Life and Death are 100%, absolutely not two sides of the same coin. It’s not like it’s _impossible_ to have one without the other… except that it is.”

“And what purpose do you have here, then, little mortal?” Thanos asked in a voice that rumbled in power and in the strength of his barely-checked wrath.

Tony offered the Titan a shark’s grin, knowing that there was blood in the water. “I’m the Merchant of Death. And I’m here to offer you a bargain, Thanos. Shall we begin?”

::fin::

**Author's Note:**

> Side note: I am fully aware that Mistress Death =/= Hel in the Marvel 'verse but, for the sake of this story (and since more traditional Norse mythology pops up here), I combined the two.


End file.
